Central stations receive information from monitoring systems (e.g., in-home alarm or security systems) and handle dispatching emergency services based on critical information sensed by the monitoring systems. Central stations may monitor a large number of user accounts in which case system failures may adversely impact performance of individual monitoring systems and reduce the safety offered by the monitoring systems. Techniques for directing monitoring data traffic can include redundantly operating multiple central stations by creating distributed networks of affiliated central stations to monitor a large number of user accounts.